Salvation
by alice in a coma
Summary: Spoilers through 7.01 Truth or Consequences. /All she hears are the voices in her head, telling her to let go./ Ziva-centric. Tony/Ziva.


Salvation

_All she can hear are the voices in her head, telling her to let go._

_

* * *

_She takes Michael's mission because she wants to forget, and yet not forget because she needs to feel his spirit around her _somehow; _and because if she does, she has a great chance of not getting out alive.

She is ready to die long before that ship blows up.

When she wakes up alive--the sole survivor—strapped to a chair in a tiny room, she curses whatever force it was that won't let her simply fade away and rest.

She is so tired of living.

--

She was born in the dead of night with independence stamped on her forehead and her heart. As her mother held her—all silence and curiosity-filled eyes—she knew her daughter would see much of the world.

Perhaps too much.

She was named Ziva because it means "light of God" and Adela David thought she looked something like salvation, on that hot summer night.

--

Ai did not like her at first. In fact, it was not until she began chucking things at him every time he entered a room that he began to respect her.

--

She was gutsy and defiant, even as a girl. She taught herself anything she wanted to know: to walk, to speak, to read, to write, to run. She did not accept anyone's help if she could afford it.

Some days, Adela looked at her and wished she would. Just once.

--

They are merciless.

The beatings come quickly and often. She can feel things crack and break on a daily basis, and slowly she loses hope. With each beating, her conscious slips farther and farther from her until she is quite alone with all her thoughts.

Soon, everything runs together in a spiral of _have beens_ and _might haves_.

--

Talia was born under with an endearing smile and bright eyes when Ziva was five years old, and the sense of unconditional love quickly overtook her. She was a good big sister, so said _Ima, _when she sang to Tali and let her hold a strand of her hair when she cried.

As they grew up, she stuck up for the youngest David and taught her the tricks to surviving in a man's world.

She was the first person Ziva learned how to love.

It would be a long time before that happened again.

--

She excelled in her studies, not because her father pushed her, but because she pushed herself. She was at the top of the class, and when the other children saw her, they whispered that she knew more than they would ever hope to.

One day, she received bad marks on a paper, and when she came home, she showed it to her mother, her head bent in shame.

Adela laughed.

"But _Ima,_" she protested when her mother dismissed her. "I have failed. Are you not disappointed in me?"

Adela David shook her head. "Oh, child," she said a little sadly. "You are too hard on yourself."

Year later, in a building halfway around the world, Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo would say the same thing to her. She wouldn't believe him either.

--

Hallil was in her class when she was eight years old. He followed her around and begged to hold her hand. He gave her flowers and demanded to be her sweetheart.

Eventually, one day, it became too much.

She punched him.

The boys avoided her after that.

--

She saw her first bombing when she was nine—sitting on the porch of her house with Ari. It was a hot day, and Ziva was taken aback by the sudden noise and flames in the distance.

She pushed Ari's hand away when he tried to cover her eyes. Even then, she was not afraid.

Later, she asked her father why. Why would someone want to do that to an entire city?

_Ab'_s only answer was, "Hate does awful things to people, my Ziva. Sometimes the only way they know how to express it is to kill."

Ziva frowned, not understanding.

She would learn quickly enough.

--

The truth serum eventually does nothing more than put her into a deep state of unconsciousness. Her exhaustion overtakes her often, but each time she wakes up, Saleem is there, regarding her from across the room. Sometimes, he speaks, though what he says she can hardly understand.

All she can hear are the voices in her head, telling her to let go.

She always listens.

--

Dancing became her favorite pastime when she was eleven. She loved the feel of her body twisting and moving in a way that was almost religious. She took every class she could find. Her mother smiled and encouraged her. Tali tried to dance with her. Ari hugged her and told her she had done well.

But Eli David never said anything.

She thinks later that's why she gave it up two years after she began: it never earned his approval, and that is something she has always been searching for, even in that tiny cell in Africa.

--

At thirteen, and for three summers afterward, she was sent to the desert with an old friend of her father's and it was here she shot her first rival. It was frightening and exhilarating all at once, and for once in her life she felt as if she _belonged_ somewhere. It was a feeling she would carry with her all her life.

It was there, in the desert, that she met Michael Rivkin. He was sweet and even-tempered, unhardened by a world of bombing and lies and deceit, and she smiled at him and let him take control because she had thought she'd like to be that way, if only she had known how.

That first summer, he kissed her and told her she was beautiful.

She let him because she liked the way the sweat slid slowly down the side of his neck.

--

Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo did not like her, and she knew it. Not when she first caught him having bizarre phone sex in the middle of the office, and not when he found her a few days later, sitting in the desk across from his, waiting to be assigned something.

She did not think she cared because really, he was an ass, and she did like to deal with those kind of men.

But sometimes, his hand would brush against her and she'd forget to breathe, and she _knew_, just knew, that there must have been more to him.

--

They rape her, as she would expect them too, and she loses count of the number of times. If she had the energy or the desire to live, she would seduce them all into letting her alone, but she has no willpower left, it seems.

Saleem never participates. Perhaps because of her heritage or because he simply is no rapist. Either way, he never even attempts.

It is a small mercy, and not one she deems herself worthy of.

--

"Tali! Slow down!"

She was seventeen.

"Hurry up, Ziva! Quickly, quickly!"

Talia was twelve.

"When did you get so fast, little sister?"

"I think the question is when did _you_ get so _slow_?"

They lay back in the sand of Israel. It was late at night, and yet still Ziva could feel the heat of the day all around her, pressing her heavy against her body.

She listened to Tali's laughter and felt joy rising in her chest.

Turning to her, Talia mumbled, "I cannot believe you are leaving tomorrow, Ziva."

Ziva smiled. "I know. But I will be here with you, in your heart. And I will write, I promise." She tucked some of her sister's hair behind her ear, and Talia caught her hand, pressing it to her lips.

"You will come back soon?" she asked.

"As soon as possible."

"And you will miss me?" Talia's smile was teasing, but Ziva saw the truth—the worry, the love—behind it.

Rolling onto her back once again, Ziva breathed a small, longing sigh, "More than you will ever know."

--

The first present she received was a doll, at the ripe age of three, and by the end of the day, it was in ruin: hair and limbs strewn across her room in a testament of all the destruction that would mark her path in life.

--

To have a soul _mate_, Ziva thought, one probably must have a soul.

Perhaps that was why she did not have one, no matter how much she thought Tony could be, if he wanted (not that it was something you got by wanting).

Perhaps her soul had died with Ari.

--

There are several times she comes close to breaking down, to telling her captors everything, but she always stops herself. Because she is a Mossad officer, and she has been trained well. Everyone else may break, but she is Ziva David. Ziva David never breaks.

Except once. But she thinks that may have been what got her into this mess in the first place.

--

They resented her when she first came to NCIS, Gibbs most of all. She knew it because she had seen it all in their eyes: the way McGee was frightened by her flippancy toward violence; the way Tony glared at her across the room, wishing for someone else; the way Abby struggled to be only hostile toward her; the way Gibbs always gave her the most ridiculous jobs.

They all missed Kate; she knew it. She was not Special Agent Todd, and she knew she never would be, but for a reason she couldn't quite pin down, she wished she could be, if only it would make the healing that much easier.

That was, perhaps, the second time she learned about love.

--

At two o'clock she used to stand in the rain, wishing she knew how to be real.

--

Movie nights became routine when Tony was put in charge. The day was always long and hard, and she was never surprised when he appeared at her apartment with a movie and a pleading look on his face.

He didn't know how to do this, he told her one night, long after the movie had ended. She wished she knew how to help him.

The movie nights stopped after Gibbs returned because Tony didn't need them (though she suspected this wasn't true) and because her father disapproved, and she was in his command.

She regretted it, and sometimes she could see in his eyes that he did too.

--

Her father told her, when she was a cheerful, skinned-kneed child with a long list of hopes and dreams and fears, that when things change, they could never return to what they once were.

She hated this idea.

And she told him so.

But she quickly changed her mind, and managed to lose a little bit of her faith in the world.

--

She does not cry in front of Saleem, but once, when in the privacy of her cell, she allows herself to cry over the loss. Over the past four months. Over her father's somehow justified abandonment. Over Gibbs, McGee, Abby, Ducky, Palmer, Tony. (_Especially Tony_.)

And over Jenny. Over Kate, who she never knew. Over Ari, and over Tali. Over Gibbs' Kelly and Shannon. She cries over war and poverty. Over all the breaking hearts and all the innocent ones that will never get the chance to be broken. She cries for all things lost.

It isn't enough; it never was.

--

Home meant different things to her at different times. As a child, it was _Ima_'s caresses and Tali's laughter and her father patting her on the head and telling her one day she might be great.

By seventeen, it was a firing ground, with the sounds of gunshots going on around her and the heat beating down on her back in a reminder of why she did this.

At twenty-five, though, there was no home. 'Home' had become obsolete. She was a nomad really, moving from assignment to assignment as efficiently as possible. She saw a doctor once to seek a cure for the odd aching in her chest, but he could not help. He merely shook his head and told her she was completely fine.

He was wrong, though, there was something wrong. The ache never went away. She began to associate it with loneliness.

--

Her best friend Sarai was there when her mother died. Ziva was twenty-two and newly recruited to Mossad. Sarai held her, waiting for the tears that she knew would never come, and Ziva moved through the next few years in a blank sort of state. Sarai told her she was broken.

Coming back from Africa, Ziva finally sees it. For two weeks she lies in bed, trying to remember the Old Ziva, but Old Ziva no longer exists, or perhaps she never did.

Either way, she wishes she could remember who she is supposed to be.

She won't.

--

Her last summer in the desert, she let Michael take her innocence. She cried out as he hurt her because he was clumsy and inexperienced, but afterward he whispered sweet nothings in her ear, things that sounded like, "I love you."

She did not deny him that small comfort, and then she left and did not see him for nearly fifteen years.

--

Abby became something like a little sister very quickly. She reminded her of Tali in ways that were almost painful, but in the end it was a blessing, because her Rule # 7 is to never forget, even if it seems like a good idea.

She loved Abby, off-putting hugs and all, and as she watched the plane to NCIS take off from Israel, she felt the ache of turning her back on one she loved so dearly.

--

God has never meant much to her. The Star of David that hangs around her neck before Saleem takes it from her is never to remind her of faith, but of its originally owner, Tali.

It is hard to believe in anything living amidst destruction and desire.

But then that sack comes off and _Tony_ appears, and she thinks there might be a God after all.

--

Everyone always assumed her favorite color was red because it was the color of passion, of fire, the color of hatred and desire and all things she could be associated with.

She tried to explain, each time, that it was actually blue because it was calm and sad and lovely.

Tony was the only person who ever listened, and when a blue-wrapped package appeared on her desk on her birthday, for once she let the butterflies in her stomach stay a while.

--

In the world of an assassin, love does not exist. Sex, passion, desire, hate: they all exist, but not love. Love is complicated, too dangerous. It can get you killed, captured, and tortured—and Ziva knows this now because she isn't sure she loved Michael, but she thinks she could have, some day.

When she looks at Tony across that crowded NCIS room, she thinks she finally knows what it feels like to love and be loved.

And wrapped in Abby's warm, gentle embrace, she thinks she might finally be home.


End file.
